Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity ed. Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower

Abstract

Reviewed by: Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity ed. Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower Christine Garlough (bio) Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity, Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower, Editors. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2021, 314 pp., $99.00 hardcover, $27.00 paper. What if care—as a value and practice—was given the weight it deserves?1 How might our lives change if care was understood as more than a philosophical ideal or inspiration for another political slogan, Instagram meme or [End Page 237] advertising campaign, and instead was intentionally mobilized in everyday local, national, and global efforts for social and institutional change? What if, in times fundamentally characterized by precarity, care became the guiding ethos—politically, socially, and interpersonally—in the face of global pandemics, entrenched neoliberal capitalism, violence fed by racism, climate change, inequitable wealth distribution, and systemic failures of communication? Could this moment, characterized by overlapping crises, usher in a care movement? In Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity, the editors, Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower call upon the expertise of prominent care scholars to offer practical and nuanced ways of reconsidering how care has been conceptualized and "how those employing care theory can effectively respond to the prevalent reality of neoliberal precarity" (4). In Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity, a wide-ranging group of international and interdisciplinary contributors extend the groundbreaking work of scholars such as Judith Butler (2004) and Kathleen Millar (2017), who have argued that while we are all ontologically precarious as part of the human condition, many people experience unequally distributed conditions of existence. Consequently, their lives are characterized by insecurity in ways that deeply affect their material, political, or psychological well-being. Hamington and Flower build upon this premise to contend that, "life's precariousness is exacerbated by individualistic and market-based responses that fail to integrate empathy and care for people and the natural world" (282) and argue for the importance of establishing caring infrastructures. To this end, the thirteen chapters comprising Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity address core concerns at the intersections of care and precarity from a diverse set of perspectives and, in the process, speak to one another in meaningful ways. Pieces by Andries Baart, Maggie FitzGerald and Yayo Okano explore care crises in the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Japan and provide distinctive assessments of care's conceptual relationships to precariousness and precarity and how these inform everyday practices, institutional norms, social values, legislative policy, and our relationship to the environment. Hamington and Flower focus on social change, and ask how might care ethics support an international social movement that "reconnects people separated by identity-based discrimination, disparate resources and oppressive violence?" (9). Vrinda Dalmiya deftly explores the limitations of care, and related concepts like empathy and vulnerability, when they are transformed into commodities with market-oriented agendas in contexts like volunteer tourism and celebrity humanitarianism. In addition, Italian care theorist, Elena Pulcini—who recently passed away from a COVID related illness—provides a beautifully written chapter on global vulnerability that revisits the question of why we should take care of future generations, who are distant from us in both space and time. In the face of a very uncertain future, what are our obligations to them and how might these take form in daily commitments? [End Page 238] For those new to care scholarship, Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity offers an indispensable overview of the field. It also provides valuable insights into the strengths and limitations of more than four decades of care scholarship, as it engages rigorously with emerging scholarship and provides new perspectives on old debates. For instance, how might we better understand the complicated relationship between care giving and care receiving? Sarah Clark Miller's chapter attends to the moral precarity of caregivers in neoliberal systems and the precarity of relationships themselves. In doing so, she considers the ways "caretaking practices and policies have been negatively affected under neoliberal principles and institutions" and provides innovative arguments regarding the long-term damage caregiving may do to caring relationships (48). Writing through the lens of social-welfare feminism, Eva Feder Kittay's chapter extends her...